This book, in continuation of the tradition of action anthropology, is a contribution in the discipline of anthropology. It specifically portrays the experiences of an administrator, as an action anthropologist who spent considerable time with the tribes and other vulnerable groups in India. This is also particularly important in the post-globalised India where attention of the government as well as academia on tribes and tribal societies has increased significantly.

The title ‘Persistence and Change’ is an anthropological understanding and it provides an ethnographic account of a tribal society in West Bengal in particular and tribal societies at large in India. The thrust of the book is to describe tribal lives and livelihoods empirically. It also tries to capture the snapshot experiences of the tribal communities. The book critically analyses the various development initiatives of the government in order to address the problems and needs of the tribal communities of India, in general, and West Bengal, in particular.

The book may explicitly be useful to policy-makers, public functionaries, academicians, social scientists, scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and development studies.